Year in Review: Pennsylvania's top topics of 2010 include Marcellus Shale drilling, Shenandoah immigrant-beating case

View full sizeA drilling rig used to bore thousands of feet into the earth to extract natural gas from the Marcellus shale deep underground is seen on the hill above the pond on John Dunn's farm in Houston, Pa. Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008. (AP Photo)

The debate was fueled by tainted water in Dimock and a well blowout in Clearfield County, by an anti-drilling ordinance in Pittsburgh and a fight over a proposed extraction tax at the Capitol in Harrisburg.

It was a controversy that grabbed headlines throughout the state in 2010, making for one of the year’s biggest stories.

Other news pulled heartstrings. A boating disaster on the Delaware River in Philadelphia left two foreign tourists dead. Twelve Haitian children found new lives in Pennsylvania after an earthquake devastated their country.

And a 91-year-old woman who couldn’t bear the loss of her husband and twin sister was found to be living with their corpses.

The year started with reverberations from a far-off natural disaster: Gov. Ed Rendell helped to airlift 12 Haitian children to Pittsburgh after the island’s catastrophic quake on Jan. 12. Eventually, Haitian and U.S. officials cleared the way for American families to adopt them.

The same month brought record snow to Pennsylvania. Back-to-back blizzards dumped more than 40 inches on Pittsburgh, its snowiest February since at least 1884. By spring, Philadelphia had endured its snowiest winter ever with more than 78 inches; its average is 19.

View full sizeJoseph Kaczmarek, The Associated PressA rescue vessel on the Delaware River where a tourist boat carrying 37 people overturned when a barge hit it.

Also in July, casinos statewide began offering table games like craps and roulette. Philadelphia became the largest U.S. city with a casino when SugarHouse opened in September; a second planned casino, Foxwoods, had its license yanked by state regulators at year’s end after years of construction delays.

The controversial HBO documentary “Gasland” spotlighted environmental threats from gas drilling in places like tiny Dimock in Susquehanna County. In December, the state reached a $4.1 million settlement with Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. over tainted water in Dimock; meanwhile, the Delaware River Basin Commission instituted a drilling moratorium in the state’s northeastern corner while proposed regulations are debated.

Voters elected a wave of GOP officials in November, including Attorney General Tom Corbett as governor and Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta as a congressman.

Barletta made a name for himself championing Hazleton’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, but a federal appeals court struck down the laws in September. The city appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In October, residents of Centralia, the central Pennsylvania coal town decimated by a mine fire, filed suit in federal court in an effort to prevent state officials from evicting them.

View full sizeAP Photo/Matt Rourke, fileThe tomb of Jim Thorpe is shown in Jim Thorpe, Carbon County, Pa. A son of Jim Thorpe is suing the Poconos town that bears his father's name over the remains of the Native American often called the 20th Century's greatest athlete.

“The bones of my father do not make or break your town,” said Jack Thorpe, 72, of Shawnee, Okla. “I resent using my father as a tourist attraction.”

And Iran continues to imprison Josh Fattal, whose family in suburban Philadelphia has been fighting for his release since he and two friends were arrested while hiking near the Iran-Iraq border in July 2009. One hiker has been released.

In Erie, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was given a life sentence for her conviction in a disjointed and deadly plot that killed a pizza delivery driver, who was forced to rob a bank wearing a collar bomb that later exploded.

Several people were charged in the February death of a mentally disabled woman in Greensburg. Prosecutors allege the suspects tortured Jennifer Daugherty, 30, for more than two days before killing her and stuffing her body into a trash container.

Arthur Burton Schirmer, a retired pastor in the Poconos and formerly of Lebanon County, was charged with killing his wife and staging a car accident to cover it up. His arrest prompted authorities to re-examine the 1999 death of first wife.

Colleen LaRose and Jamie Paulin-Ramirez are awaiting trial in federal court in Philadelphia on terrorism charges. Authorities say LaRose, of Pennsburg, agreed to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had offended Muslims. They also claim she used the online screen names “Jihad Jane” and “Fatima LaRose” to raise funds for Islamic radicals and recruit others, including Paulin-Ramirez. Both have pleaded not guilty.

The state lost a Grammy-nominated soul singer. Ladies’ man Teddy Pendergrass, known for “Close the Door” and “Love T.K.O.,” died in January at 59 after battling colon cancer. The Philadelphia native had been paralyzed in a car crash 28 years ago but continued to record and perform.

John Murtha, the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress, died of complications from gallbladder surgery in February. The 77-year-old Democrat represented the Johnstown area for 35 years; he made headlines in November 2005 when, disillusioned with the war in Iraq, he called for an immediate withdrawal of troops.

Chemical fortune heir John du Pont died in prison while serving a 13- to 30-year sentence for killing an Olympic wrestler. Du Pont, 72, had been found guilty but mentally ill in the 1996 death of gold medalist David Schultz.

Beer and wine lovers had reason to rejoice this year: Both became available for sale in supermarkets.

Philadelphia’s two main newspapers, the Inquirer and Daily News, were auctioned not once but twice in bankruptcy court. The papers’ creditors wrested control from publisher Brian Tierney in April but could not close after one union nixed a contract offer. Creditors won another auction in September and closed the deal. Final sale price: About $139 million.

Last January, candy maker Hershey Co. lost out to Kraft Foods Inc. in the bidding for British rival Cadbury PLC.

Divorced mom Kate Gosselin of Wernersville returned to reality TV with child labor permits for her young twins and sextuplets. State officials ruled in April that the kids should have had permits during previous filming of “Jon & Kate Plus 8” but did not sanction producers; they obtained the proper paperwork for this year’s spinoff, “Kate Plus 8.”

A suburban Philadelphia teen became an Internet celebrity after running onto the field at a Phillies game in May. Video showed Steven Consalvi weaving and dodging authorities in the outfield before a police officer stunned him with a Taser.

View full sizeAP Photo/Michael Rubinkam, fileJean Stevens, 91, holds a photograph from the 1940s of herself and her late husband, James, outside her home in Wyalusing, Pa. Authorities say Stevens stored the bodies of her husband, who died in 1999, and her twin, who died in October 2009, on her property. As state police finish their investigation into a singularly macabre case, no charges have been filed.

She was not charged with a crime. After her story was published, she received sympathetic letters from around the world. And, as the year drew to a close, a local carpenter was putting the finishing touches on an above-ground crypt on Stevens’ property.

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